Mini-vacation
My aunt's funeral is this afternoon, in North Carolina. We had been planning to drive down there to be present in person (driving and camping to avoid excess interaction with other humans along the way), so we scheduled vacation days for Thursday and Friday (so as to take a leisurely drive down and have time to see relatives other than at the funeral) and Monday (so as to take a less-leisurely-but-not-frantic drive home). Then my mother chickened out on account of COVID, so we did the same, and will attend the funeral by Zoom. We unscheduled Thursday's vacation day, but kept Friday and Monday.
So on Friday we drove to the Storm King Art Center, an outdoor modern-sculpture park in the Hudson Valley. It's 500 acres of rolling hills, with pieces of sculpture scattered around everywhere, ranging from pieces the size of a human to towers a hundred feet tall and landscapings hundreds of yards long. 500 acres is rather a lot, really: we got to maybe a third of the sculpture installations before physical exhaustion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shalmestere is extremely sensitive to heat and humidity) sent us home. But it was quite pleasant spending the day surrounded by lovely scenery, with no particular deadlines or goals, seeing the green and feeling the breeze.
Yesterday I had wanted to return to the Hudson Valley for a hike in the mountains with the dogs, such as Anthony's Nose or Storm King. And the weather looked promising for such an endeavor, but there was also a hurricane heading our way, and we didn't want to be caught in it if it arrived a little earlier than predicted.
So we stayed home and did ordinary weekend things like laundry, lawn-mowing, and gardening. I put in a row of bricks along the edge of our front walk, and another along the edge of the walk between our house and the left-hand next-door neighbor, to define the edges more clearly and keep the grass from growing over the walks. And we (mostlyshalmestere) cut a bunch of branches off the quince trees in front of the house: we're leaning towards having them removed altogether after this year's crop, if there is a "this year's crop" -- in recent years the squirrels have taken many of the fruit, and the rest have been full of moth-larva poop and not useful for cooking.
The hurricane started making its presence known around 7 PM, when I walked the dogs in a light drizzle. Then went to the grocery store, and by the time I got out the light drizzle had become a downpour. Just at the moment it's not raining, so I'd better walk the dogs before it starts again.
So on Friday we drove to the Storm King Art Center, an outdoor modern-sculpture park in the Hudson Valley. It's 500 acres of rolling hills, with pieces of sculpture scattered around everywhere, ranging from pieces the size of a human to towers a hundred feet tall and landscapings hundreds of yards long. 500 acres is rather a lot, really: we got to maybe a third of the sculpture installations before physical exhaustion (
shalmestere is extremely sensitive to heat and humidity) sent us home. But it was quite pleasant spending the day surrounded by lovely scenery, with no particular deadlines or goals, seeing the green and feeling the breeze.Yesterday I had wanted to return to the Hudson Valley for a hike in the mountains with the dogs, such as Anthony's Nose or Storm King. And the weather looked promising for such an endeavor, but there was also a hurricane heading our way, and we didn't want to be caught in it if it arrived a little earlier than predicted.
So we stayed home and did ordinary weekend things like laundry, lawn-mowing, and gardening. I put in a row of bricks along the edge of our front walk, and another along the edge of the walk between our house and the left-hand next-door neighbor, to define the edges more clearly and keep the grass from growing over the walks. And we (mostly
shalmestere) cut a bunch of branches off the quince trees in front of the house: we're leaning towards having them removed altogether after this year's crop, if there is a "this year's crop" -- in recent years the squirrels have taken many of the fruit, and the rest have been full of moth-larva poop and not useful for cooking.The hurricane started making its presence known around 7 PM, when I walked the dogs in a light drizzle. Then went to the grocery store, and by the time I got out the light drizzle had become a downpour. Just at the moment it's not raining, so I'd better walk the dogs before it starts again.